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These problems at any rate all serve to show that, while in
general it is necessary to look for differences by which to
separate things from each other, to hunt for differences of the
differences themselves is both futile and irrational. We cannot
have substances of substances, quantities of quantities,
qualities of qualities, differences of differences; differences
must, where possible, be found outside the genus, in creative
powers and the like: but where no such criteria are present, as
in distinguishing dark-green from pale-green, both being regarded
as derived from white and black, what expedient may be suggested?
Sense-perception and intelligence may be trusted to indicate
diversity but not to explain it: explanation is outside the
province of sense-perception, whose function is merely to produce
a variety of information; while, as for intelligence, it works
exclusively with intuitions and never resorts to explanations to
justify them; there is in the movements of intelligence a
diversity which separates one object from another, making further
differentiation unnecessary.
Do all qualities constitute differentiae, or not? Granted that
whiteness and colours in general and the qualities dependent upon
touch and taste can, even while they remain species [of Quality],
become differentiae of other things, how can grammar and music
serve as differentiae? Perhaps in the sense that minds may be
distinguished as grammatical and musical, especially if the
qualities are innate, in which case they do become specific
differentiae.
It remains to decide whether there can be any differentia derived
from the genus to which the differentiated thing belongs, or
whether it must of necessity belong to another genus? The former
alternative would produce differentiae of things derived from the
same genus as the differentiae themselves- for example, qualities
of qualities. Virtue and vice are two states differing in
quality: the states are qualities, and their differentiae
qualities- unless indeed it be maintained that the state
undifferentiated is not a quality, that the differentia creates
the quality.
But consider the sweet as beneficial, the bitter as injurious:
then bitter and sweet are distinguished, not by Quality, but by
Relation. We might also be disposed to identify the sweet with
the thick, and the Pungent with the thin: "thick" however hardly
reveals the essence but merely the cause of sweetness- an
argument which applies equally to pungency.
We must therefore reflect whether it may be taken as an
invariable rule that Quality is never a differentia of Quality,
any more than Substance is a differentia of Substance, or
Quantity of Quantity.
Surely, it may be interposed, five differs from three by two. No:
it exceeds it by two; we do not say that it differs: how could it
differ by a "two" in the "three"? We may add that neither can
Motion differ from Motion by Motion. There is, in short, no
parallel in any of the other genera.
In the case of virtue and vice, whole must be compared with
whole, and the differentiation conducted on this basis. As for
the differentia being derived from the same genus as themselves,
namely, Quality, and from no other genus, if we proceed on the
principle that virtue is bound up with pleasure, vice with lust,
virtue again with the acquisition of food, vice with idle
extravagance, and accept these definitions as satisfactory, then
clearly we have, here too, differentiae which are not qualities.
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